Kidney Cancer Surgery and my life thereafter

I was diagnosed with Kidney Cancer on October 1st of 2009. Only a few weeks before that, I was shocked when I saw dark red blood while I was passing urine. Of course, I went to see an Urologist immediately. We both thought that I had a kidney stone and in order to confirm our presumption, he sent me for a CT-Scan.

We were wrong. The CT-Scan revealed a large mass in my left kidney. On November 30th, my kidney was removed via a “laparoscopic robotic radical nephrectomy” – the entire removal of the organ using a minimally invasive technique and the assistance of a surgical robot.

It’s exactly two weeks now since I had my surgery done. Time to have a look at the current situation.

To my surprise, I am doing very well and I can’t complain. Apparently, it’s too early at this point to start working out again. I also have to be careful with lifting up heavy items, or just in general all activities that could put strain on my abdomen. But what I really couldn’t understand at first: the doctors told me, that I will have no or only very limited dietary restrictions.

Knowing that I only have one kidney left, I thought it will take a while until my remaining kidney and the other organs will get ready to compensate for the loss of one of their compainons. But apparently, that’s not the case, every thing seems to work perfectly okay. There some foods I was told to better be careful with, things like red meats and bananas. Basically anything, that contains potassium or causes the body to produce high levels of uric acid.

However, I did make a decision to be extra cautious. Meat, I never really liked anyway, so it was easy for me to scratch it off the list entirely. The same is true for candy and all the sugary stuff. And also all alcoholic beverages. When my wife got diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year, we both immediately changed to a very healthy lifestyle, which means cutting out everything that could be detrimental to our health.

Only a year ago, I had my blood and urine checked after I had to see my doctor because of joint pain I had encountered periodically. He diagnosed me with gout. My body was unable to discharge the excessive amounts of uric acid that were produced in my kidneys. Gout attacks are very painful. And I think only the stent that was put inside of me during a Cystoscopy, caused me more excruciating pain.

So I had the choice – staying off of anything that produces high levels of uric acid or to continue suffering from gout attacks. Apparently, this was a no brainer. Instead I joined my wife in living as healthy as possible. Very little processed food only, a lot of green and leafy stuff, green vegetable smoothies with some fruit, veggie juices made of locally grown organic produce, grains like millet, amaranth, brown rice pasta, etc.

I still do eat ridiculously big amounts of food and I probably will do so for the rest of my life. Nonetheless, since we only eat good quality stuff with a low glycemic index, I lost a good amount of weight and I am now in the ‘ideal range’ again.

Okay, in sum: considering that I just had surgery done on me, I am feeling great. A few things still have to wait, activities such as working out. It’s too early, yet, I need to wait until I am fully recovered.

But other than that, I’m doing great.

The author Tony Ulrich provides kidney cancer info on ‘My kidney cancer’ , a website where he talks about how his own and his wife’s cancer diagnoses have changed their lives.